Letter Home From Camp

Tessa, 

Just got back from 5 days of dazing and confusing teenager-watching at Covenant Pines.  Since you couldn't make it, heres a snapshot of things you missed.

1. A Jr. High boy asking if, after devotions were finished, we could all maybe have an awkward silence.  His request was granted, and it was awkward.
2. A Jr. High boy walking through a field, bending over to retrieve a pair of underwear from a pile of wet leaves, and asking aloud, "How did my Hanes get all the way out here?"  (Yes, he took them back to his cabin for safe keeping.)
3. A Jr. High girl who happens to be a semi-professional log-rolling champion, explaining the finer mechanics of the "Jerk and Squirt", a technique for making your opponent slip off the log.
4. A kid trying to scare me in the middle of the night.  Unfortunately, his arms waving in the darkness landed on my crotch, and the boy and I both wound up equally freaked out, shouting "Ahh! What is that?!"
5. Me waking up in the middle of the night to a boy staring at me and screaming.  Night terrors, apparently he remembers nothing.
6. Me waking up in the middle of the night to chipmunks -- CHIPMUNKS! -- running across my sleeping bag. 

So there you have it.  The highlights and lowlights of a week with 300+ of your closest teenage friends.  Makes you sort of understand why some animals eat their young.

I Heart You.

Dog, Gone.

Tessa, 


Yesterday I lost Mom's dog.  Hopped the back fence.  Like a bird into the clouds, like a hare into the woods, like a teenager with daddy issues into a Hot Topic.  Gone.

But he came back, and that's the part I'd like to focus on.  Did I leave someone else's pet unattended, in a backyard that's about as secure as Paris Hilton's acting career.  Yes, yes I did.  But I'm also 1 for 1 on lost dog's eventually being returned, and that's 100%.  So, in spite of this little bit of administrative malfeasance, I'm still voting YES! this fall on Proposition Pup.

I Heart You.

Idiot With an Eye for Opportunity

Tessa,

A Minneapolis woman sued the city because she tripped over an orange traffic cone.  She claimed the cone was a hazard, and she should have been better marked.  The judge threw the case out, saying that the bright orange cone was, itself, a warning the woman probably should have noticed.  He noted that putting orange cones out to mark more orange cones ahead would result in never-ending parades of orange cones.

You have to love this woman though.  This woman has bad luck mixed with some poor eyesight, deftly layered atop a desire to strike it rich.  Who's to say Isaac Newton wouldn't have done the same thing if he were hit with a blaze orange traffic cone instead of an apple?  Past ages required you mix your desire to be wealthy with a good idea and some hard work.  Nowadays, play dumb and aim for that well-marked hole in the pavement.

I Heart you.

BREAKING NEWS: Apathetic, Disaffected Blog Author No Longer Deserving of Own Blog

If this blog were a fern, it would be brown.  If this blog were a fish, it would be upside-down at the top of the tank, mouthing "...flush...me..." with its final fishy breath.  Let's do one more: if this blog were a  were a celebrity, it would be Calista Flockheart (because the blog's under-nourished, and loves Harrison Ford).

In spite of my total lack of commitment to so many things that now seem like -- of course -- they were doomed to fail from the very beginning (see: garage wood-shop, yard work of all sorts, calligraphy, jiu jitsu), I still think I can handle the responsibility of a puppy.  My unflinching disregard for the realities of my own personality aside, I think a puppy would be a good idea.  The wagging tail, so exited to see you up in the morning.  The wagging tail, so happily expectant you're home.  The tail, wagging at other times, but happily.  Always happily. 

So think about it.  I promise to walk it.  House train it.  Teach it to say grace before eating.  And if none of this works, think about this...

...not this.

  

 I Heart You.